Blak Douglas is a Dhungatti man (Mackley Vally) NSW born in.1970
Adam Geczy is an Associated Professor at the Sydney College of the Arts born in 1969
The painting is done with synthetic polymer paint directly on the wall of the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane. The painting is a gift from the artists through the Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art Foundation 2019. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program.
NEW HOLLAND (NOT) (2013)
This stark collaborative painting recalls a history lesson chalked on a classroom blackboard, but one that differs in content from the widely accepted narratives of Australian history.
In 1644, Dutch navigator Abel Tasman first referred to the western and northern coast of the Australian continent as ‘New Holland’ during his circumnavigation of the landmass. In referencing his own homeland, Tasman disregarded the placenames already in use by the Indigenous owners. This process of renaming was perpetuated by a succession of European explorers, including Captain James Cook who, in 1778, claimed the east coast of the continent for the British under the falsehood that it was terra nullius — literally, ‘land that belongs to nobody’. In New Holland (NOT) artists Blak Douglas and Adam Geczy redress these acts of imperialist erasure by striking out the imposed European placenames.
This work was first created in the Netherlands in 2013 to mark the 300th anniversary of the Peace of Utrecht, a group of treaties signed in 1713 by European powers, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession, delivered renewed political stability to Europe and set the stage for a new age of empire. In New Holland (NOT) the artists aim to draw comparison between these conciliatory events and Australia’s colonial history.
Source: Queensland Art Gallery
